Back from the Wild

For the past two months I have been dedicated to my Adventure Log series for Breath of the Wild, where I have been playing the game and blogging about it in great detail.

For all this time this blog has been on shutdown mode. It was important to me and still is that I figure everything out on my own and that I'm not told by others what to do in the game or how the game works. Even if I struggle to find stuff or misunderstand things, it was all part of the experience. I know that people might only mean well, when they are trying to help, but for me it's only a true classic gaming experience, if I have to discover it all by myself.

The only things that I had looked up were the ghost chests, because this had been driving me crazy, and the amiibo rewards, because I'm not very patient with random stuff. I've also learned some things from Skype contacts and got occasionally spoiled on Twitter (e.g. someone showing the completed Key Items menu), but that couldn't be helped. Otherwise I have been going "blind". No guides, no GameFAQs, no nothing. And it was a blast!

Now I'm close to completing this game, "only" about 250 Koroks left to find and a hand full of minor tasks. And it's finally time to return back to business with Hyrule Blog, where I want to talk about the game in other ways. I want to speculate about the (2nd) DLC, suggest small improvements and review the game in various ways. Originally I wanted to wait, until I've did everything except for the 900 Koroks, but it seems like Nintendo didn't want to wait as long, because they dropped the bomb about the first DLC today, revealing all its contents. So, I suppose, it's time to get back to normal, whether I want to or not!

The Adventure Log series will continue nonetheless, even if posts will be less frequent.

Breath of the Wild Adventure Log, Entry 31

Horsing Around, Part 2

I've done a little more horse stuff today. First of all, I just now realized what the entries 002 and 003 in the Creatures section of the Hyrule Compendium are... I had this open space between "Horse" and "Lord of the Mountain", but I never put any thoughts into it other than that I was obviously missing something here. Now I want to complete the Hyrule Compendium and I realized quickly that those had to be the two special horses, which I named Ganon and Zelda. So, I took them out and brought them back to their original habitats for a nice photo shoot:

The entries are called "Giant Horse" and "White Horse". And this should essentially confirm that these are all the special horses that you can get, other than Epona.

I also found a better Midna at the Taobab Grassland, where the Ganon horse photo shoot took place:

I don't like the all white mouth, but it appears that certain places really give better horses with five star stats. Problem with Taobab Grasslands is that it's a looooooooong way back to the next stable and that's after you took care of the two Lynels and the horde of riding Bokoblins.

A better spot seems to be the Upland Lindor, where you can get safely and quickly to either the Serenne Stable or the Tabantha Bridge Stable. I did find a better Hilda there:

Again it's the exact same stats as the blue horse, where I would like to find a horse with better speed somewhere. I might have to opt for a different color to get that five stars on speed. It can't be coincidence that the blue and black horses all give similar stats all the time.

Also, ideally there would be a horse with full 15 stars, if that's even possible. I guess, I have to experiment more and see, how things go. Again, it would be helpful, if I could actually check the horse stats before registering it.


Loser Lynels

The Blood Moon rises! Yay! This means, it's time to smash some Lynels again! I had significant luck with getting Star Fragments from Lynels these days. Almost a 50% chance. It still will take quite some time to collect enough for upgrading all the amiibo armor, though. So far I've only upgraded the Cap of the Hero, which cost one Star Fragment on each step. For the rest I will still need a total of 44 Star Fragments. Eight more with the upcoming amiibo in June. Yikes. This is even worse than any kind of grinding that Hyrule Warriors asked of you.

At least fighting Lynels is a lot of fun and I'm getting better and better at it to a point, where I might not even get hit once even without using Urbosa's Fury or Daruk's Protection. With these two abilities they are a joke anyway, but I use them mostly on the clubbed Lynels.


A Talus and a Hinox

So, I've found one more Talus and one more Hinox:

East Daval Peak Stalnox
Darb Pond Igneo Talus

I suppose that all the remaining Hinox are in fact Stalnox, because the other Hinox types are hard to miss and I should have been everywhere by now. I might not have paid attention to one or the other Stalnox on my travels, though. The game doesn't register them as enemies, as long as they are "sleeping", so the Sheikah Sensor+ won't target them and they don't get highlighted by the Stasis+ field. They are a mere decoration and that makes them hard to notice sometimes.

And targeting these enemies with the sensor is problematic in general, because there are four or five different types for them. Other than than the Stalnox there are Red, Blue and Black Hinox. And there are Stone Talus, Luminous Stone Talus, Rare Stone Talus, Igneo Talus and Frost Talus... You can't just keep going through all these all the time, that would be annoying.

At least with the Igneo Talus and the Frost Talus they are regional. Igneo Talus only seem to appear Death Mountain, which is where I could locate a fifth one using the Sheikah Sensor+.

So, it's a 2:2:2. Two Side Quests left, two Hinox left and two Talus left. I still have no clue about the missing side quests, but I will figure it out eventually. I was trying to find a pattern in the stables, where some have two side quests and others don't. But no luck with that either... If you have any ideas, please don't tell me, I want to find it out on my own!

And yes, you will be able to tell me after this post, because I want to return to normality with this blog soon.


Current Progress:

• Main Quests: 15/15
• Side Quests: 74/76
• Shrine Quests: 42/42
• Shrines: 120/120
• Koroks: 652/900
• Talus: 38/40
• Hinox: 38/40
• Molduga: 4/4
• Map Rate: 79.40%

Breath of the Wild Adventure Log, Entry 30

It's the last day of April already and just now I managed to find and complete all 120 Sheikah Shrines in Breath of the Wild. Took me long enough, but this speaks for the game!


Horsing Around

One of my side goals is finding good horses and so far I didn't have much luck with that. Other than the three special horses, I want a black horse named "Hilda" and a blue horse named "Midna", after I had named the white horse "Zelda". But problem is that I keep getting the exact same stats:

Four strength, three Speed and four Stamina. This goes for both the black and the blue horses. It seems like the best that I can get, which is a little disappointing. I've been told that there are places, which give better horses, e.g. the Taobab Grassland, where you can find the Ganon horse. But I didn't have any luck there either, it usually starts with having lower Stamina.

It also doesn't help that you can't see the exact stats of a new horse, unless you let one go. That's somewhat annoying, ideally you could check the stats before replacing another horse, since you never can be sure, if it's really better.


Empty Areas

I've been looking for the last shrine and I arrived at a point, where even Sheikah Sensor+ on Treasure Chests doesn't give any readings anymore (other than the "ghost chests"). So, from time to time I was activating the normal Shrine Sensor, but that didn't really help me either. Nothing on the radar.

My target have been areas with nothing much to be found, like Mount Faloraa for example. Sometimes I would find some new Koroks, with certain named areas it's also likely to discover a Talus or Hinox. But sometimes it seems like there just isn't anything there at all.

Probably the most extreme example would be a part of the Faron Jungle, the Damel Forest and Dracozu River. Everything around this section has lots of stuff, including many Koroks, some Sheikah Shrines and more. But in this particular part of the jungle there's nothing to be found other than some treasure chests. And I have checked this area multiple times now, where I've climbed all the treetops looking for hidden rocks, balloons or windmills just in case there really still might be some Koroks there. What I found were three small caves behind destructible walls... Each of them got me excited for nothing, because there were just some ores inside.


The Final Shrine

Now, I've spent lots of time running all over Hyrule looking for the last shrine, where my intuition, which successfully led me to the previous two shrines, didn't help me this time. Even activating the Shrine Sensor every once in a while didn't help. So, I asked a simple question:

"What's possibly the worst place, where the last shrine could be hidden...?"

The answer was simple: Hebra, of course! And so I went back to the Hebra Mountains, where I just wanted to let the Shrine Sensor do its magic. However, I then switched back to the Treasure Chest Sensor, because I still was missing some chests around a certain area and funnily enough that's what brought me to the final shrine, the Maka Rah Shrine.

It's at Lake Kilsie. I stumbled over a new Korok in the hills above the lake and then heard the typical shrine cave music below me. I went down to check to find the shrine behind a crack in the rocks:

You now have to look for the real entrance to the cave, which is easy to miss. But discovering this shrine certainly was fun.

The trial was named "Steady Thy Heart" and it was an entertaining little trial, where you open gates and find some sort of threat after each one. I liked it and I'm happy that my last shrine was cleverly hidden and also not some mere Blessing.

One last time... before the DLC.

Other than getting the last Spirit Orbs, you also receive something else for completing all 120 Sheikah Shrines. The reward awaits at the Forgotten Temple, which is nice, because you can also use the big Goddess Statue there to do the last prayer.

If you don't want to know, what the reward is, stop reading now! To me this wasn't a surprise, because I had been accidentally spoiled about this on Youtube, but I don't want my blog to do the same for you. So, if you don't know yet and keep the surprise, stop reading!

It's the "Tunic of the Wild"!

If you already have all the amiibo tunics, it might not feel particularly special. But it's nice that players without any amiibo can still get a traditional tunic. Also, fully upgraded it does give the higher defense value and unlike the amiibo tunics you also dye the whole outfit, if you want to:

(Pants were not dyed here.)

It also has a "Master Sword Beam Up" Set Bonus... Which doesn't strike me as that useful. To be honest, for the longest time I didn't even know that you can "throw" sword beams with the Master Sword. I would have preferred it, if the sword beams came with each strike similar to the Windcleaver. Then this set bonus might even be useful.

Well, before the game came out, I was afraid that in the end you might just end up with the Master Sword, Hylian Shield and the traditional tunic, completely tossing the new look aside. And while I was right, the amount of time it needs to get all this stuff is pretty significant, so most of the game will still celebrate the diversity that Link can have. And nothing beats the Climbing Gear, imho.

Another Armor Upgrade

The rest of the day I spent upgrading the last set of armor. And I was right earlier this month (in Entry 24), when I upgraded all the other armor and speculated that there has to be at least one more piece of gear in the game that needs the claws of each dragon. That really was the case.

Other than that it needed Courser Honey Bee and Energetic Rhino Beetles. The bee hives were found quickly, pretty much every forest area in the game has some. The Energetic Rhino Beetles on the other hand were a little bit trickier and you need 15 in total of them. Don't give any to Beedle! As far as I know, there isn't anything gained from this anyway, other than him not being annoying for a little while. Him asking for the beetles really gets in the way of his business...

Anyway, there seem to be lots of them in Akkala and with the Stealth Armor equipped they are easy to grab. Unless some Yiga Blademaster suddenly spawns right in front of you and scares it of. Or some Stal enemies. Or it starts to rain. Or they just fly off on their own. Or, or, or... For Hylia's sake, the randomly spawning enemies and the rain are already annoying enough, but it's ten times worse, if they get in the way of your prey.

The last armor set also requires all different dragon parts of all three dragons, where I only was missing some of Naydra's. So, I spent the rest of the time on Mount Lanayru, waiting for the thing...

By the way, to farm the dragon parts I'm using the Twilight Bow that you can get with the Zelda Smash amiibo. It shoots in a straight line, so it's the best way to accurately target whichever part you need.

For the fourth upgrade it also costs a Star Fragment each, but luckily I have saved some, instead of already wasting them all on the amiibo gear. By now I've fully upgraded the Sheik's Mask, which took TEN Star Fragments in total. TEN!!!! The amiibo tunics don't seem to be as bad, but I still lost some motivation to "grind" for these. But I did get quite couple from defeating Lynels, so that's good.

I've also kept collecting amiibo gear, until my inventory was overstuffed, because I wanted to know the maximum. You can have a total of five pages of armor, which is enough for all the individual armor that you can get in the game and via amiibo. There isn't much room for having dyed duplicates, however.


What now?

I guess, I'm now finished with the important parts of the game, but there's still things left to do. Other than a total of 255 Koroks, I have still two Side Quests left to find, as well as three Talus and three Hinox for the Medals of Honor. And I have to complete Hyrule Compendium, but I have been doing a lot for this at the sidelines and I'm only missing a few entries.


Current Progress:

• Main Quests: 15/15
• Side Quests: 74/76
• Shrine Quests: 42/42
• Shrines: 120/120
• Koroks: 645/900
• Talus: 37/40
• Hinox: 37/40
• Molduga: 4/4
• Map Rate: 78.74%

Breath of the Wild Adventure Log, Entry 29

Border Patrol

After one week without finding any new shrines, I had to be more methodical. And my main method was studying the map to find "empty" places, where I feel like there should be something, even if it's just a Korok.

This brought me to the edge of the world map a couple of times, because I had the suspicions that there could be something. But it was just all dead ends, literally. One of these places would be a small peninsula at the north of Akkala:

Judging from the map it really was a place, where I wanted to go, but there wasn't anything there and Nintendo just lazily stops you from going on in the middle of the place. They couldn't even wait for the spiked rock formations. And the rocks on the hill, when you're going back, are for some reason not climbable. Weird.

On my way through Akkala I also discovered a new place: the Shadow Hamlet Ruins. It really got me excited for a moment, because I suspected to find something there. But as with all the giant rocks around Death Mountain, this little ruin in the middle of them didn't seem to hold any secrets...

I also explored along the border of the Gerudo Desert and here I noticed, how weirdly shields behave on sand. I already thought that it was odd, how shields don't break during Sand Seal Surfing. But I get it that this would be super annoying, if your shield broke in the middle of the Vah Naboris battle or whatever. However, it seems like shields in general don't break, if you surf on sand. Also, even on small slopes you speed up quite a lot, so you can go relatively fast through the desert even without a Sand Seal. Well, at least it made me appreciate Shield Surfing much more in general, where I'm now using it more often to get around. Outside the desert this also gets rid off all those Royal Shields that you find everywhere.


The Breakthrough

Well, I had been groping in the dark for the longest time to a point, where my motivation to keep going through this game dropped significantly. It had been over a week of playing without finding any of the last remaining shrines. I was even activating the Shrine Sensor from time to time just to be sure that there wasn't anything around, with no luck either.

But then I finally had my breakthrough with the Dow Na'eh Shrine. It was located in an area, where I certainly felt like that there should be a Shrine around, because otherwise there is no quick access to the places around...

It's behind a waterfall at the center of the Lanayru Promenade. I was probably as happy as I was embarrassed, when I found the Shrine. While it's true that it's hidden behind a waterfall and I found it by climbing behind the water flow, there's also a tunnel right next to the waterfall leading right to it that I had completely missed...

Thing is that I have explored this area multiple times. I salvaged all the treasure chests in the water around here (there are quite a few) and I climbed around the ruins next to the waterfall many times to look for Koroks, but I never saw the tunnel during all this. To be fair, it's only really visible, if you walk right to it. Otherwise the perspectives might play tricks on you and you will miss it. But it was still a little embarrassing and showed that sometimes I'm not as thorough in exploring the areas, as I could and should be.

Anyway, it felt good to be back in a shrine, where these Portal-esque trial chambers really have this stark contrast compared to the overworld with visuals, atmosphere and even gameplay. I enjoy this quite a lot.

A shrine? Gotta bring out the good gear!

The shrine contained the "Three Boxes" trial and it was another one of these puzzles, where the name of trial gives the solution away. It might have been a little bit trickier, if it was named differently.


One More

My intuitions also led me to Mount Floria, because there was no teleportation point up there. I suspected that there might be a shrine hidden somewhere near the top of the mountain, but I couldn't find anything. This was one of these moments, where I turned on the Sheikah Sensor to be sure. And it did pick up a signal after all. I decided to turn the sensor off again right away to make it not too easy, where after a while I finally found the Tota Sah Shrine...

It was also near a waterfall, the one where you find the Great Bandit treasure south of the Dueling Peaks stable. I did explore this area before, just last week I've been going through the Hickaly Woods, but I've always missed the hidden cave. At least I'm glad that it was hidden in a cave behind a wall, so I probably wasn't completely blind, just not thorough enough at the time.

But I enjoy the challenge of finding these hidden locations.

The shrine was home to the "Toto Sah Apparatus" and the last part felt like using one of these boss keys from Skyward Sword. It's somewhat awkward to do with the Wii U GamePad, because you have to turn the entire controller around in your hands to position the sections. And with the lasts ection I don't think I even got the real solution. I didn't even use the loose staircase, the whole thing was lopsided and I somehow jumped to the goal.


So, now there's only one Sheikah Shrine left for me to discover! Coincidentally I also had one Shrine Quest left and naturally you would assume that they were related. Maybe another gang of Goron thugs would await me somewhere... But it turned out that I was simply missing the "Eye of the Sandstorm" Shrine Quest, where I had found the corresponding Dako Tah Shrine a very long time ago (see Entry 8). But this answered my question from the time, where I wondered, if finding the shrine caused the sandstorm in the area to vanish. The guy at the Kara Kara Bazaar basically confirms this, who's easy to miss, because he sits on some high chair above a tent. And he doesn't talk to you at night, which is why I probably missed this dialogue earlier. I was also curious, what would happen, if you find a shrine before the corresponding Shrine Quest, but it simply will be solved right away.

I guess, to find the last shrine I will have to trust my intuition again...

Current Progress:

• Main Quests: 15/15
• Side Quests: 73/76
• Shrine Quests: 42/42
• Shrines: 119/120
• Koroks: 625/900
• Talus: 36/40
• Hinox: 37/40
• Molduga: 4/4
• Map Rate: 77.00%

Breath of the Wild Adventure Log, Entry 28

What's on the horizon? Nothing at all. While I have used every evening this week to play the game, I didn't make any significant progress. And with that I mean that I still haven't found any of the three remaining shrines. I arrived at a point, where I'm inclined to actually use the Sheikah Sensor to find them, because I currently have no clue, where I should be looking. It almost feels like there's a super secret place somewhere that holds three shrines... On the other hand I did find lots and lots of treasure chests and Koroks and I also went on the offensive against all types of Guardians.


Canyon Crawling

I made another tour through Tanagar Canyon up to the Forgotten Temple, where this time I took out all of the Decayed Guardians to explore the inside of the temple in detail. This was kind of fun, trying to take them out one by one without getting hit by the others.

For some reason I had the feeling that the next night I will get a Blood Moon, so that the entire place is filled with the Guardians again. And my guts didn't betray me, the Blood Moon really came, but luckily I was done with exploring the place by then. I did find multiple treasure chests, as well as lots of Koroks on top and around the temple...

Nearby is the Serenne Stable, where by now I'm trying to pay attention to all NPCs, just in case I'm missing some valuable information or even a sidequest again. And one of the persons leaving the stable was talking about the "Forest where the Master lives" to the south. I have no idea, which forest he means. It could be the Giant's Forest and simply reference the Hinox there, but I followed the whole road southwards all the way to the Dalite Forest, where I didn't find anything important.

Because I spotted another Korok formation on the map near Vah Naboris, I went on to the Gerudo Canyon, where I honestly thought that going up the Yarna Valley would lead to a shrine. I hadn't explored this small valley yet, but in the end it just lead to places, where I already had been...

Castle Crawling

Highlight this week was exploring all of Hyrule Castle and Hyrule Castle Town again, this time with the Sheikah Sensor+ active, where I've been looking for all treasure chests in and around the castle. And there were lots of them.

I've also destroyed almost all the Guardians, which was a lot of fun and didn't even cost me a single Ancient Arrow. All those Savage Lynel Bows that I had gathered from fighting them really came in handy here. Especially the ones with greater Attack power or Five-Shot Bursts do devastating damage, if you combine them with either Fire, Ice or Shock Arrows. I tend to use Shock Arrows, because they make the most sense when fighting machines, but they also do more damage than Fire and Ice Arrows. I have a stock of over 500 all of these types, so I can fire at will.

Anyway, if you shoot a Guardian in the eye, it takes about six shots of this combination to take them down. So, it's a good way to destroy them and unlike in the Forgotten Temple I didn't have any time pressure here after the job was done. The Blood Moon won't be in effect, as long as you stay in a dungeon. It will keep coming back every night, but as long as you stay inside Hyrule Castle you can keep exploring it with all enemies gone.

And the atmosphere is really great. Since most of the game uses ambient music, having an actual music theme play makes certain places even more impressive. In case of Hyrule Castle the main chorus reminds me a little bit of the Ballad of the Windfish from Link's Awakening, it's just darker and more epic. But I'm always fired up, when I'm visiting this place, humming the theme alongside the game. Nintendo really did a great job with this "dungeon".

So, I kept exploring the castle, looking for all treasure chests, scanning everything with Stasis to find Koroks and fighting my way through all the enemies. Ideally I did this so thoroughly that I never have to go back there again.

With some of this I was reminiscing, how much things have changed over the course of the game. It's not just that I can easily take care of all enemies in the game, but also my perception about some of the items. Early in the game I thought that Stasis was the least utilized / useful ability in the game and by now I'm using it the most. I still rarely use it for its actual purpose, but freezing enemies for a short time and "scanning" the environment for anything that can be moved is invaluable.

It's similar with two-handed weapons. At first I thought that they were at a big disadvantage over the other weapons, because they are way too slow for the damage that they deal and they leave you exposed to enemy attacks. But with three full Stamina Meters you can make good use of the whirling spin attack, where this does so much damage in a short time that even all the silver enemies can be defeated quickly with this technique. Using them is still a risk, but it can be worth it.

Apropos weapons, after I was done with my "Hyrule Castle Mega Tour", I found out about the Royal Guard's gear sidequest... So, I had to go back to Hyrule Castle after all. I did like the idea of the sidequest, where I was looking for all the pieces of the Royal Guard weaponry, which are hidden in different places all over the castle. But it turned out that you only need the sword, which was somewhat disappointing.


Koroks, lots of Koroks

I did find quite some Koroks during my castle tour, even one where I would classify this as a new type of Korok puzzle that I haven't seen before...

Near the Castle Gate, below the Observation Point, there is an emblem with arrows sticking to it. You can see them glimmering from a distance and if you shoot an arrow yourself at the thing, a Korok turns up. I probably have to keep looking for arrows in the environment now... For example hose targets near Hateno Village came to mind. Or the gateways to Kakariko.

During this part I wished that I could just use the Sheikah Sensor+ to target Koroks to make sure that I really have all of them in and outside Hyrule Castle. I can do this with treasure chests and I really enjoy it, when the sensor finally becomes silent and I have "cleared" an area. But with the Koroks I can never be sure, unless I really manage to find all 900 of them. And without any help this might be quite difficult and time intensive to do it all. I don't want to look at guides or maps in the internet, so I would prefer having some ingame help, where a Korok sensor would be the simplest and best solution.

It's also kind of ironic, how I'm unwilling to use the Sheikah Sensor for the Sheikah Shrines, which is its main purpose, while I can't use it for Koroks, where I would be willing to.

2-in-1

This week I made many tours through various other areas including the Tingle Islands, Faron Grasslands, Lurelin Village, Lake Floria (again), West Necluda, Goron City, Hebra Mountains and more... And by now I've gotten exactly two thirds of the Koroks, 600 of them. I'm just afraid that it ends the same way as with the Sheikah Shrines, where I'm unable to find the last couple ones without any help, because they could be anywhere. I probably have to come up with a more systematic way of exploring everything, if I really want to do it all on my own.

Current Progress:

• Main Quests: 15/15
• Side Quests: 73/76
• Shrine Quests: 41/42
• Shrines: 117/120
• Koroks: 600/900
• Talus: 32/40
• Hinox: 33/40
• Molduga: 4/4
• Map Rate: 74.68%

Breath of the Wild Adventure Log, Entry 27

Far Sighted

Currently I'm on the lookout for my final four Sheikah Shrines and I found the first one right away. I was on my way to the Akkala Citadel Ruins, when I spotted the Sah Dahaj Shrine from atop the Akkala Span bridge. Thing is that I probably had spotted this shrine multiple times before in the game, but didn't bother to go there ealier, because I thought that it would be easy to find somewhere around Akkala or the east side of the Death Mountain. But in reality it's in a nook, where you can only see it from the right angle. And when I explored the Death Mountain area above it, I was distracted with other stuff...

It does contain the "Power of Fire", another puzzle where for some reason the shrine has a lot of leaves growing everywhere. It's seem a little odd to have these leaves in this ancient technology construct, but whatever...

Afterwards I took my time to fully explore the Akkala Citadel Ruins, now that Ancient Arrows are cheap to get and the Guardian Skywatchers aren't the biggest threat anymore. But all I found were some more Koroks. I also returned to the Ordorac Quarry to see, if you can find anything in the "maze" guarded by Skywatchers, but there wasn't anything. So, this "maze" really is completely pointless, because you can simply go around to reach the Spring of Power or any Koroks around the area.

And then I was at a loss again... Where to look? I'm very close to give in and just use the Sheikah Sensor to find the last three shrines. But that almost feels like using a guide and I don't want that. On the other hand I'm still short ten Hinoxes and ten Talus. And those guys take space.

Even though I've been everywhere, truth is that there are still nooks, hills and places that I haven't explored yet, where I probably should have been more systematic, instead of running all over the places. At least I kept marking the positions of defeated Hinox with a skull symbol and the positions of defeated Talus with an ore symbol on my map. This way it's easier for me to identify places that are still untouched.


Ghost Chests

Other than looking for the last shrines, I'm busy following the Sheikah Sensor+, which is targeting treasure chests. That takes the most of my game time currently, because depending on the area there can be lots. Akkala seems to be an extreme example, where there don't seem to be many chests around. The ocean and the Lake Floria area on the other hand have so many sunken chests, you might as well be playing the Wind Waker.

But it's really satisfying, when the sensor suddenly starts being silent and you have found all the chests around the area. Unless of course the sensor targets a glitched chest, which it does in several locations. So far I found these:

• The Woodcutter's Hut at the Great Plateau. This happens, when you get the Warm Doublet directly from the Old Man. Otherwise there would be a chest in house with this item, where the game now keeps targeting a chest that you can't get.
• East of Aris Beach there is a chest stuck underwater.
• The chest game in Lurelin Village.
• In Hateno Village between the Dye Shop and the Inn the sensor goes off, but there's nothing to be found.
• At the waterfall leading from Rassia Lake to Lake Floria the sensor also goes off, but there's nothing to be found.

I thought that the last two were just me being too blind to find them, but apparently I'm not the only one with this problem, if you look at this topic on GameFAQs about these chests (yes, I was so annoyed that I actually looked it up).


amiibo Luck

... or lack thereof. I have to say that I'm not too happy about this whole amiibo thing. I like scanning them on a daily basis to get stuff, but I don't like receiving the same Royal Shields, Royal Bows and whatever over and over again. So, I'm more and more using the save scam trick to get what I want, even if it takes several tries. But at least I finally got my first Biggoron's Sword and my first Hero's Shield today, as well as another Bow of Twilight.

The gigantic sheath for the Biggoron's Sword looks odd, though. They just should have used the one from Ocarina of Time 3D.

Now with all these rare items this is, how my current house decoration looks like:

The Ancient Bladesaw on the wall is the best, because it actually keeps spinning and gives off blue sparks while doing so. In general I like using gear that glows for the displays, where the Sword of the Sages and the Bow of Twilight were good matches.

I also stopped selling the duplicate amiibo armor pieces, where I have this weird random number generation phenomenon of getting trousers most of the time:

But it's good to know that the armor menu can have at least five pages. With the upcoming Link amiibo for Majora's Mask and Skyward Sword (which have been officially announced in this week's Nintendo Direct by the way) and any potential DLC outfits I was worried that there might not be enough space for everything. Now I only need the amiibo to give me Star Fragments to upgrade it all...

But I've learned that Silver Lynels also might drop Star Fragments occasionally. It's probably as rare, but it's helping.


Current Progress:

• Main Quests: 15/15
• Side Quests: 72/76
• Shrine Quests: 41/42
• Shrines: 117/120
• Koroks: 528/900
• Talus: 30/40
• Hinox: 30/40
• Molduga: 4/4
• Map Rate: 68.56%

Breath of the Wild Adventure Log, Entry 26

If updates on this blog are getting less frequent, it's because there is less and less to talk about. I'm currently on the hunt for the last remaining shrines, where I'm not using the Sheikah Sensor to target them. I want to find them on my own. Instead I'm targeting treasure chests, where I keep getting distracted. But this way I explore the environments in greater detail, where I'm finding more and more Koroks and ideally also the rest of the shrines.


A Minor Test of Courage

One of my first travel destinations this week were the river isles to the west and east of Hyrule Castle. Since I haven't been there yet, I thought this should be the first place to look for the last 10 Sheikah Shrines...

And this was quite the success, because I found three shrines in total! The first one was the hidden Noya Neha Shrine. I probably would have missed it, if it wasn't for the cave music that in this case also played on top of the hill, where the shrine was under. This gave it away and made me look in the other direction to find the entrance. I also found the Katah Chuki Shrine near the Hyrule Castle Town walls.

Both of these had one thing in common: they offered a "Minor Test of Strength" as a trial, where I thought that this was funny that I'm facing them so late in the game. These areas are patrolled with Guardians, where my instincts always drew me away from these places. I'm not sure, what Nintendo was thinking here, but maybe they wanted to offer something manageable for those, who try to get to Hyrule Castle early on... But for me it was weird to find these minor strength tests so late in the game, after I've done over half a dozen "Major Tests of Strength" already.

(And since we're talking about such weird things... I just found the last entry in the "Ability Controls" menu right below the options. I was missing the "Jump Slash" technique and it turned out that I had to talk to the guy in Kakariko, who likes to train with his sword. It's funny, how you can find the tutorials so late in the game.)

Anyway, I also found another "Modest Test of Strength" in the Namika Ozz Shrine at the Crenel Hills. This area was also quite nice with the these hollow tree chambers, where each of them housed a different type of elemental Wizzrobes and Chuchus together.


Of Kings and Bosses

Now that I'm exploring more of the center of Hyrule, I finally noticed some references to Zelda II - The Adventure of Link: there's a "Helmhead Bridge" and "Carok Bridge", both named after bosses from the game. Earlier I was afraid that there weren't any references to this game at all. Overall I would have liked, if there was a "Parapa" region somewhere, but these bridges are better than nothing.

I also noticed, how there are "mountains" named after all the kings in the series. There's Mount Daphnes, Mount Gustaf and Mount Rhoam all around Hyrule Field. But there's also the "Tuft Mountain" near the southern coast, which is the first (and probably only) reference to Tri Force Heroes that I caught in the game.

Now, the only Zelda games, where I haven't noticed any direct references yet, are the Four Swords games. But it's not like these two games had much original content to begin with. I guess, you could count the overabundant usage of the word "Talus", but this area name originated from Oracle of Ages...


Full Stash

After collecting 441 Korok Seeds, I was "already" gifted with the power of full stashes by Hestu:

Shakala! This seems a little odd. Why not make it an even 450? That would be exactly half of the Korok Seeds. And why not keep giving the player something for collecting the rest? I bet that collecting them all won't be worth the effort, probably just the traditional endless Rupee supply, if anything at all.


A Quest for Shrines

After finding three new shrines around Hyrule Castle, I was somewhat at a loss, where I should be looking next. It felt like I have been everywhere already, so at first I didn't have any specific destinations and I kept heading out towards random locations or just following the Sheikah Sensor+ from one treasure chest to the next.

Since I was at the Korok Forest to make the final upgrades to my stash, I there went after some treasure chests hidden inside trees that I missed, when I went through the Lost Words the first time. And his led me back to the Military Training Camp...

After I got all the chests there, I decided to make a tour around the Thyphlo Ruins, because I hadn't explored the area north of them yet, the Deplian Badlands. But I didn't find anything interesting there, only some Lynels and Koroks. But this was the perfect opportunity to explore all of the ruins to get all the hidden treasure chests in the area and to finally have some use for the fully upgraded Luminous Armor.

It doesn't give off any real light, though, so you still have to carry a torch around. I would have preferred something more similar to the Light Armor in Tri Force Heroes, so that this set has some real use other than looking cool in the dark and silly in the light.

I've also spent more time in Central Hyrule, where other than studying bridge names I rode against Guardians using horses that I tamed on the fly.

After depleting the Master Sword, I also tried out a Guardian Sword++ and the Ancient Spear against the Guardians, which felt even more satisfying than the Master Sword. It was also a good idea to gradually burn down all of my stronger weapons, instead of clinging to them, so I finally had more space in my inventory for basic tools like Korok Leaves or Torches.

Otherwise I mostly explored around the Necluda and Faron regions, where I spent quite some time around Lake Floria. This whole area is infested with treasure chests, which kept me busy for a while and even lured me back in again and again, when I explored in the areas around, like at the Keelay Plain. I spent so much time there that by now I could open a shop for Farosh body parts, because he kept appearing and I kept taking my shots at him, even though it was basically a distraction from a distraction. But hey, at least I found a lot of Koroks on my way and even discovered a new type of Korok puzzle - after like finding half of them. It involves the local statues, so this type of puzzle is probably only present around Lake Floria and Faron Woods.

Finding chests can also be tricky in this area, where the Sheikah Sensor sometimes isn't of much help. I would prefer it, if it made a steady sound, even if you're standing still, as soon as you're very close to your target. The way it is now, pinpointing the location of chests can be quite confusing, because if the chest is below or above you, you don't get a clear reading.

Apropos chests, there seems to be a glitched chest in the ocean at Aris Beach. It's stuck underwater and I wasn't able to pull it out with Magnesis. I even tried Stasis and shooting things at it...

Anyway, I've explored a lot, found many chests and Koroks, but in terms of finding new shrines, this all has been fruitless efforts. So, I decided to return to my original method and try to pinpoint places, where I haven't been yet. After all I still had three Shrine Quests open, where there had to be more to some of the missing shrines.

And my instincts drew me to the Hyrule Ridge, where I had the feeling that I hadn't explored all that much around it. And this was the right choise, because I found two more shrines at the perimeter.

One was the Maag No'rah Shrine, which was hidden quite cleverly, similarly to the Ke'nai Shakah Shrine in the east. It was hidden so well that you even get a Blessing for the sole act of finding it. I guess, it's not so hard to find, if you're using the Sheikah Sensor to locate shrines, but without this cheat device you have to pay full attention to your environment.

Not so hidden, but simply a place, where I hadn't been yet, was the Sheem Dagoze Shrine. It contains the nice and little "Moving in Parallel" puzzle, which is another puzzle shrine not requiring any runes. It's also opened by the Shrine Quest "The Two Rings", where Kass serenaded his final song. He went home to Rito Village afterwards, accompanying his five daughters:

This is just lovely, I didn't even realize until now that these were his children. It would be interesting to see, what happens, if you haven't completed the "Warbler's Nest" Shrine Quest yet. I suppose, the quest goes on normally, but at least there should be some new dialogs with Kass about his daughters.

Also, I completely forgot about his hut at Washa's Bluff, where he left a notebook about his song locations. I guess, I could have just looked everything up there earlier, but I did find all the locations anyway...


Studying the map made me realize that I haven't been to Mount Nabooru and Nebra Hill yet, you can even spot some Korok rock circle formations near the latter right on the map, as well as some other circle thingy near Mount Nabooru. This is where you can find the "Test of Will", another "Gut Check Challenge" by some Gorons, where you have to endure heat and fire long enough, the second time even without any protective gear. You can still use potion effects or just simply endure it.

It gives access to the Joloo Nah Apparatus, where I was surprised that it wasn't yet another blessing, but a three part puzzle about twisting cubes with different objects bound to their sides. I find these motion control puzzles a little annoying, if you have to twirl the entire Wii U GamePad around. So, I just used Fire Arrows to solve the last puzzle with the torches...

Only four Spirit Orbs remain! (And a little under 400 Koroks...)

Current Progress:

• Main Quests: 15/15
• Side Quests: 72/76
• Shrine Quests: 41/42
• Shrines: 116/120
• Koroks: 507/900
• Talus: 29/40
• Hinox: 29/40
• Molduga: 4/4
• Map Rate: 66.58%